Bibi: Bad news for Israel or Palestine?

[EC]

Hardly had the official results from the latest Israeli Knesset (parliamentary) elections been posted than scores of pundits raced to pen down their opinions. There were those who were jubilant with the outcome - yes, they do exist in the USA, in Europe and even within some ruling echelons of the Arab World. Then there were those who saw an apocalyptic cloud darkening further over this land of milk and honey, perpetuating a fetid occupation and as a result strangling democracy.

In my opinion, the truth lies somewhere between those two stark polarities. And that halfway grey zone exists whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denies the existence of a future Palestinian state or accepts it with his mercurial qualifications.
Israeli voters endorse Netanyahu's policies

I am frankly not bothered if Isaac Herzog was nerdy and lacked political charisma or else if Tzipi Livni cast a negative pall on the electorate. Nor do I wish to lampoon any of the other candidates let alone address those grave domestic problems that the Zionist Union amplified almost exclusively whilst Likud ignored almost exclusively too.

Not so awful

Today, I would merely like to argue why the outcome in my opinion is not such an awful thing for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For someone who was involved with second-track negotiations during the Oslo years and who subsequently became disillusioned with this dud process, the re-election of Benyamin Netanyahu will magnify the sharply contrasting facets of the conflict and perhaps coerce the Palestinian Authority, the USA and the EU to undertake some hard choices.

    The Palestinian Authority: I am not an advocate of Hamas and I disagree with their ideology as much as I often do with their practices. However, I am nowadays also less of an advocate for the PA that has lost its way and sullied its early principles for the sake of maintaining the fiction of negotiations. They have shuffled their positions continually in an attempt to keep the current status quo alive. It is time for them to examine this process a tad more openly and conclude that it has truly become an instrument that grants Israel all the geography it seeks for its illegal settlements, outposts or walls, fences and aquifers, whilst ridding itself of the human burden of the demography. Is it not time to stop this charade, dissolve the PA structures and re-strengthen the PLO as the sole and legitimate representative of all Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza? Would this not return the burden of occupation to Israel and kick in the apposite international conventions that carry legal obligations with them?

    The USA: All I need to do is count the number of standing ovations to Netanyahu's address in front of the US Congress in Washington DC (26 altogether) or the forthcoming visit by Republican House Speaker John Boehner to Israel to congratulate his ally, in order to realise the inequitable role that the country plays with regard to this conflict. Was it not the somewhat maligned Pat Buchanan who said to the McLaughlin Group in 1990 that "Capitol Hill is Israeli occupied territory"? Much as I respect those analysts who postulate that this might change due to the tensions between Obama and Netanyahu, I also disagree with them. The US cannot become a fair arbiter because doing so requires not a new man in the White House but a re-modelling both of the way many US politicians think and of the lobbying influence of pro-Israeli hard-line organisations across the country.

    The EU: Casting political pressure points aside, there is still so much economic muscle that this 28-state body can apply to help Israel comply with international legitimacy and end its 48-year-old occupation. After all, are the tariff reductions that Israeli goods enjoy under the EU-Israel Trade Agreement - an agreement which offers Israel more favourable treatment than any other country outside the EU - not conditional upon the respect of democratic and civil rights? The EU has inexorably become a collective (or individual) banker with no credible say about the outcome of the conflict. From Tony Blair as a failed peace envoy for the redundant Quartet to the phobia that Europe manifests when criticising Israel, has the EU become unprincipled, inept, inefficient and alas irrelevant?

The new Israeli coalition government will no doubt lurch the country toward more right-wing radical postures and in so doing alienate the slim prospects for a two-state solution.

Netanyahu is not lying: the man speaks the truth when he says that he does not want a Palestinian state ... because he realises that one can barely be established on viable 1967 borders.

Netanyahu is not lying: the man speaks the truth when he says that he does not want a Palestinian state - Bar-Ilan

Read more: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/03/bibi-bad-news-israel-palestine-150322104822015.html

This whole 1967 borders thing is a farce. I suppose the USA is happy to return Texas, New Mexico and California to Mexico then? After all, these territories too were obtained by an act of war.

[240B]

Every country everywhere since the history of time was formed by conquest. There is no 'natural' France, or Italy, or Russia, or anything. The borders of these countries were formed by what they could take and hold.

What the world is trying to say is that this timeless common rule does not apply to Israel, even though it does apply to everyone else. Furthermore, Israel has never fought an aggressive war of conquest. Every war they have ever fought was defensive.

The worst losers, should Israel pull out of these lands, would be the Arabs who live there. They are living a life of luxury under Israel. If Israel were to pull out, these same Arabs would be living in death, destruction, poverty, war, and misery, just like all of the other Arabs all over the world.

[Right_in_Virginia]

Every country everywhere since the history of time was formed by conquest. There is no 'natural' France, or Italy, or Russia, or anything. The borders of these countries were formed by what they could take and hold.  What the world is trying to say is that this timeless common rule does not apply to Israel, even though it does apply to everyone else..

I don't think it's that simple.  The question that keeps rising to the surface is "what about the indigenous people on this land?" 

To date there have been two options:

1.  If the West Bank and Gaza are legally recognized as part of the state of Israel (borders defined), then the people living there must be full citizens with full rights.  This is the core of the "one-state" solution.  This solution is not only opposed by Netanyahu but also explains his recent insistence upon defining Israel as a "Jewish state"-- A one-state solution would mean Jewish Israeli's could become the minority in Israel.

2.  If the West Bank and Gaza are not legally recognized as part of the State of Israel (borders not defined), then the issue shifts to a question of the rights of the indigenous people under an occupation. This is also the root of the growing accusation of "apartheid"--especially in Europe.     Under this scenario, the solution points to the recognition of  two separate states.   But this raises opposition from Israel because it brings up these issues:  returning to the 1967 borders, the capital city of Jerusalem and to whom it belongs, the relocation of a significant number of Israeli settlers from the West Bank and the fear of increased attacks.

Hardly a win-win situation for Israel.  But after 47 years, someone needs to decide on one of the two options--or come up with a new third way to address the people the world has come to call "the Palestinians".

[sinkspur]

There can be no two-state solution as long as Hamas is a partner with Fatah. Israel cannot and should not agree to a solution that empowers a terrorist group, nor should it recognize a separate state that has declared the eradication of the the Jewish people.

Inevitably, in the case of two states, the Palestinians will not live in peace, will attack Israel, and we'll be back to the current set-up after Israel crushes them in a war.